burning viridian
by quorra laraex
Summary: A kiss with a fist is better than none. It isn't love, but it's getting there. — Sasuke/Sakura


**burning viridian**

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_Breathe, Sakura. Collect yourself_.

If she doesn't, there's a very big possibility that this scene could get ugly _fast_.

Her knees feel wobbly and there's a throbbing beneath her chest and her throat is tight accompanied by a stupid swelling in her stomach that she can't make out and she can't control what her own body is doing to her as her eyes are met with his. In a second she looks as if she's about to vomit, yet in a blink her stance is ready and she looks about ready to _pumble _the _shit _out of—

"_Sasuke…_" The blonde ninja drops his jaw, looking straight ahead at the boy who strolled into their territory without a single damn. Naruto's gaze is a messy combination of shock and suspicion. "Sakura-chan, go somewhere safe and warn Tsunade."

She hates how inferior he makes her out to be. She isn't the weak link anymore. The Haruno girl stays put beside him, glare intact directed at the boy who betrayed everyone—betrayed _her_. She almost felt the way his hand tightened around the front of her neck in a single grip before she's forced back to reality. If he was picking a fight, she'd gladly accept the offer.

"No need to _warn_ anybody," his tone is condescending, as it always is—unless it was broken, shattered to the brim with his heart like stone and his eyes resembling the devil, himself. But it's not there—it's almost as if he hadn't even left them all those years ago. He has a smirk she isn't used to seeing and a voice so close to—_what even was it?_—normal? "You can just inform them that I'm fighting _for_ Konoha."

/

And that's where it begins, with his words confident and bright, as if the history has with just about everyone on this ground hadn't even happened. She hopes the daggers she glares into his mind remind him of the daggers she could easily stab him with, before she cocks her head a different direction and struts off, finding injuries to heal.

/

"You can deal with her later," she hears Naruto muffle out from his cot as she passes the tent later on. "Right now, we need to focus on…"

His voice drowns out and Sakura wonders about how easy it is for Naruto to forgive a man such as Sasuke Uchiha—to allow him to sleep in the very tent he'll be sleeping in. Her eyes widen at the thought of another betrayal that would include a traitor, muffled cries, blood, and her being too late. She pivots her heel and runs through the open flap of the tent lost in her own fear of losing another someone she cares for.

She stops on her tracks when she (carelessly and literally) runs into his hard physique. She pushes herself away from the _douchebag_ before scowling and whispering violently toward Naruto. "Why's he even here?!"

"I said I'd give him a place to sleep at this time…" his eyes are a vulnerable blue as he innocently chokes out. It's exactly what Sakura's afraid of—his naivety.

"Not that, idiot," she rolls her pea eyes at him, almost shuddering at the fact the Uchiha's boring holes into her bubbly hair. "Why's he _here_?"

"Let's not get into detail for the third time today," _he_ cuts in then, said arrogantly factually. "If you actually cared, _Sa-ku-ra_, you would have been there when I explained myself to begin with."

Her hands are clenched on her hips and her eyes are, once again, narrowed in his direction. She grimaces and holds herself back.

"You can call it—," he cracks his knuckles. "—a change of heart."

/

Sakura Haruno needs to be mature about this, she knows. But she can't help it sometimes, especially now—especially with him, because his nonchalance infuriates her and so does his presence and it kind of makes her feel thirteen again except for the (_oh-so_) passionate love and lust that dwelled in her. It all feels like fire in her veins and hatred in the depth of her head.

She can't help it when the words slip out of her mouth in honesty when her and the Uzumaki boy argue, "He's dead to me."

He's standing outside the tent, right beside the flap as she says this and she knows he is. She doesn't give a damn, though.

/

"I'm not doing this for you," he whispers when he passes her lifeless silhouette.

"You're not doing this for anyone, not even yourself," she's quick to retaliate, as if she'd practiced what her response to that single statement would be if he had said it to her earlier. "You're selfish and spoiled and I could only pity you for running around in that web of lies you lost all of us—including _yourself_—to."

/

She can't exactly remember how her morning started—it was a blur, another one—clarity broken into bits of crimson meshed with a metallic taste and a gasp for breath. She recalls a very concerned Naruto pulling her away and dark eyes that looked somewhere between somber and sympathy—it differed from the orbs that had been placated in her mind all that long ago; the image she would unconsciously see and emerge in her mind before she'd awake in the middle of the night. Those eyes that haunted her; they were gone. Someone's screaming her name (accompanied with _stop-you're overreacting-you're out of control!_) and she remembers rolling her eyes because he hurt her and tried killing her and he broke her in ways that no one could even understand.

She's sitting down now, feet against the concrete floor and eyes downcast. She won't look up until he leaves. Unfortunately, he doesn't.

"Sakura," he starts, but she doesn't let him finish. She stands, her eyes a burning viridian when they finally flicker to his, and she strides away. She can still feel the impact of his gut against her knuckles.

/

When he finally grasps her attention—(it takes him quite some time and a rough hold on her wrist before she rotates her body to face him full-on)—he apologizes.

It takes her awhile before she can answer, her bright lime (not so innocent, anymore) eyes searching him, for any trace of lie or hidden motive. When all she finds is guilt traced on the ruby rims of his eyes and the tensing of his mouth as he watches her watch him, she nods, biting her tongue before her heart (that was severely damaged for years) gets the better of her.

"You should be."

/

He's damned by the words she left.

And he experiences the feelings she must have felt that night at the brink of Konoha.

/

There is blood seeping from the corners of his eyes and he has bruises that line his cheeks down to his jaw. His arm is bent in the wrong direction and he's spewing out black in coughs that can barely make it past his mouth. Sasuke is a mess of bones and blood, and his mind wasn't any better than his physical state. He can't move—barely. He tries making out words, trying enveloping them with his tongue, but there's no use. All he makes are sounds that can't be heard three feet away from him.

And then she's kneeling beside him, he can tell, because all that comes to view is a haze of coral and jade. He tries to muster out her name, and when he can't, he tries again.

She only looks at him, and his vision is to the point where he can't tell if she's just watching him die or if she's crying for him—he's incapable of everything. She could easily end him then and there if she wanted to. It would save him all this contemplating and endless suffering his mind preoccupies him with. He's still trying to say her name.

"Just shut up, Sasuke." Her voice is normal, unbroken and unfazed and she begins to heal him; her chakra igniting what's left of his veins and bringing him to a point of clarity—and he comes to the term with the fact she needs healing in return. His name is on her tongue and it seems foreign to his ears. He almost doesn't notice how she hadn't added that stupid honorific after it. But it didn't matter, because this is a start. At least there is a start for his redemption.

And he decides to start with Sakura Haruno.

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_fin_.

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**note:** i'm actually so stressed i should really get some sleep.  
this has been in my documents for like the longest time and by longest time i mean two weeks or something. had to get it up before the next chapter comes up.


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